Science: Shockproof Rats

Rats mislike loud noises, as many a laboratory worker knows. And a
shrill noise may throw them into something like an epileptic fit. This
elementary experiment has long served as an introduction to the study
of fear. Last week, however, some very contradictory rat findings were
reported in Science by a Johns Hopkins psychologist, William J.
Griffiths Jr.

Griffiths noticed that the noise experiment has always been performed on
sheltered laboratory rats. For his own tests, he hunted down more than
100 wild rats in Baltimore alleys and warehouses, caged them and gave...